Archive for July, 2011

In March 1930, our founder William Andrews Clark, Jr. sent several aluminum dictation disks home to Los Angeles from onboard the ship Ile de France, which was bound from France to New York City. These contained his audio letters to Caroline Estes Smith and Cora Sanders, his deputies at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Library, respectively. In the 1990s, these files were transferred to audiotape, and we have recently had them transferred again into digital formats so that we can listen to them more easily (thank you, Michael Sherk!). Here, you can listen to a portion of Clark’s message to Caroline Smith, largely concerning his dislike of “futuristic” jazz music which conductor Arthur Rodzinski wanted to perform for the Phil’s next season. “I am getting tired of these primadonna conductors,” he complains.

Near the end of the recording, Mr. Clark says, “I trust that you will put this on your phonograph and get some little excitement out of it. It is rather amusing to dictate this way than to write letters.”

Thanks to all who were able to make it to the library last Friday for the opening of Oscar Wilde and the Visual Art(ist)s of the Fin-de-Siecle! We hope that this will be the beginning of many more Clark croquet parties in the future!

For those of you who were not able to come to the exhibition opening reception, the exhibit will be on view until September 1. Please call 323-731-8529 and make an appointment to view it, if you are so inclined!

Our Interim Head Librarian/Head Cataloger, Nina Schneider, has a post up today on the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Manifold Greatness blog, describing our recent exhibition on the King James Bible.

The Manifold Greatness blog and the website documenting the Manifold Greatness exhibit are well worth your time! This exhibition is now on view at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, but will be in the States for several months later in 2011 and 2012 (September 2011-January 2012 at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC; February-July 2010 at the Harry Ransom Center, Austin, TX).